


Hundred words a day keeps the doctor away

by AlecdeNocturna



Category: Alien Series, Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Black Sails, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Hellbound Heart - Clive Barker, Hellraiser (Movies), Star Trek
Genre: Body Horror, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Inspired by..., LGBTQ Themes, Magic, Multi, Murder, Mythology - Freeform, Pirates, Science Fiction, Symbionts, Vampires, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 14,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24003154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlecdeNocturna/pseuds/AlecdeNocturna
Kudos: 2





	1. Foreword

Welcome dear readers to this experiment.

This little challenge from me to me started as the first chapter denotes, on the 18th of March in the year of our lord 2020.

My university closed its doors two days prior, and all two-hundred and something of us went home into the unknown (we now enjoy our courses over the internet).  
A friend of mine wanted to do something to stay connected, so he started to post a daily metal song from his collection. And I, well I answered his call to arms with 100 words per day. At first, I actually wrote those 100 words each day, just to do something, to get my writing juices flowing. But then, not long into our journey, there was a story, that just did not want to be told in just 100 words. And so, as you will see, I wrote the story that wanted to be told for more days. My friends still get 100 words, the story split into parts. But for here I thought it would be better to post each story in its own chapter, the titles will point to the original posting days of that little written thing. 

English is not my native tongue, but I am trying to find all my mistakes. If you find some glaring ones, please point them out to me, so I can better myself, as was the core idea for this experiment.   
I will list under each story my inspirations for that particular tale and some information that I also gave my friends to better understand my thought process.

And now, without further ado:


	2. 18.03.2020

Dark purple clouds nearly obfuscated the yellowish-green sky of this alien planet. It was mid-morning, but the sky looked like it could be the middle of night. My eyes roamed over the red fleshy foliage all around me. Strange plants in a strange world. This primeval forest has stood untouched by any sentient hand for thousand of years. It brimmed with skittering life buzzing all around us in strange forms and dizzyingly colours. Only the white shimmering ruins, that stood in sharp contrast to the leaden sky, were any indication for an occupation of this place a long time ago.

Inspiration: This is actually a scene description for an RPG, I am working on. It is set in the Star Trek world and played via the Star Trek Adventure System from Modiphius. The idea to play with that particular system comes from my love for the two shows I have seen, running that system: „Shield of Tomorrow“ on Geek&Sundry and „Clear Skies“ on QueueTimes. I will probably never run the game, but the game starts on the mentioned planet, an archeological dig site. And it has pirates in it.


	3. 19.03.2020

Frosty clouds drifted through the streets, congregating around the blueish light of the street lamps, covering them in a milky-white mist. Nobody walked through the streets and over the frost-covered cobblestones, yet. It was far to early for the floating city to wake up. The only sentient beings awake and working were the crystal-engineers, who kept the flow of energy into the crystals constant so that the city could maintain its hight above the blighted and cracked earth. But they did not use the streets to move about, no they scurried like rats through the tunnels deep below the streets.

Inspiration: This scene comes from dozens of pictures of floating fantasy islands. I wanted to incorporate the idea of a magical floating island-city in one of my D'n'D games I run with some friends in university, but we never got to the point, when they would find this city. This is a glimpse into the past, when it was still working, floating, now it mostly lies in ruins and only ghosts and other nasty stuff inhabits it.


	4. 20.03.2020

The first thing he noticed was the scent in the smoke-filled air, stale beer, old sweat and underneath it all the coppery scent of old and new blood. The rhythmic strokes of a fiddle filled his ears. His hands began to shake as if hyped up by the music and the atmosphere of this dark smokey place. He wanted to spill blood tonight, his own or that of another, it mattered not to him. To feel the sweet agony of split skin and blue-purple flowers blooming on darkened flesh, that was his will. And his will ought to be done.

Inspiration: At the beginning of this semester, I started Assassin's Creed Revelation up again after a long pause. After this, I played through it, Assassin's Creed 3, Liberation, Black Flag, and Rogue. Quarantine time is gaming time. The song „Fight Club“ from AC 3 stuck with me. It sounds so Boston. So, this little story is based on this song.


	5. 21.03.2020

Dark figures surround you. Their faces were hidden behind horrendous masks, showing grotesque features between human and animal. Their voices, muffled through the coverings, still produce a droning sound, that vibrates in your bones, pierces your thoughts. They don't touch you or hurt you, they even make a passageway for you, leading you to the holiest thing in this darkened room, an altar. And on it, your communion. This writhing pulsation mass of something, pulpy and glistening wet, a sweet perfume wafting off of it, clouding your senses even more. Will you partake in it, and become one of them?

Inspiration: Besides Assassin's Creed I also played through „Call of Cthulhu“ on my PlayStation. I love the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and in my eyes, the game did a good job, of capturing the mood and mythos of his world, without being the exact retelling of a single story. This little tidbit is inspired by the mood and the subject of those stories.


	6. 22.03.2020

His index finger slid over the arm of the woman kneeling in front of him. Wherever he touched her, her skin split open and blossomed like bloody flower petals. Her eyes were closed and her mouth opened in a silent scream of pain or ecstasy, nobody could tell. He cradled her arm with one hand, whilst the other opened it up until the white of her bone gleamed between the flowing blood and wet flesh. Carefully he plucked at the sinews and nerves and the body before him shuddered and the arm twitched. Still, no sound came over her lips. 

Inspiration: As with the story before, this is partially inspired by Lovecraft's writings but also takes some of its body-horror from Clive Barker and his Hellraiser universe, which I dearly love.


	7. 23.03.2020

The fire crackled in the all-consuming darkness. A tiny pinprick of light, nearly swallowed by the endless void of a starless night, pressing all around us. This lonely light, this little spark, kindled and rekindled over and over to stave off the coming new age. Will we follow the light of reason or succumb to the blessed darkness of a lightless world of old madness? Will knowledge be our saviour or our doom? Let us embrace the gibbering madness, shed all humanity. Let us plunge into the dark ring of our souls and be reborn again in this new age.

Inspiration: I have never played a Dark Souls or Bloodborne game, but I love the stories. I actually follow the YouTube Channel of VaatiVidya, wherein a man, with the most soothing voice I have ever heard, tells you all about the games. When you are familiar with the themes of the games, you will find them in these 100 words, a little bit twisted and changed due to our current times.


	8. 24.03.2020

"I loved you without knowing you. Your wit, sarcasm, cynicism, and pragmatism was your shield against the world. But I know you were capable of emotions. I have seen it in your eyes. You once told me, I should not wait for your hand to caress my cheek, and still, I wished for your hand to warm my cold flesh. I have never felt anything like what I felt for you. But it was all in wane. I can never tell you, that the hole you left will never be filled. I will miss you as long as I live."

Inspiration: As I have said before, Assassin's Creed was a lot on my mind in the last months. Due to the beginning of the third game, I took quite a liking to the character of Haytham Kennway. This is my way of dealing with his death. One could read it in the voice of Ratonhnhaké:ton, if one were inclined to do so.


	9. 25.03.2020

Sunlight glittered in the red drops, changed them to priceless rubies, capturing your attention, as they flew through the air. Your blade sank with a wet gurgling sound into the throat under your hands, ending the life of another one of your enemies. Brutal efficiency let you decimate the troupe of ten, that had surrounded you. Your breath steady as ever, as you ran towards the last standing man. A heavy swing of your weapon and he lay dying to on the soft dirt, that soaked all their spilled life up like a greedy child, suckling at their mother's bosom.

Inspiration: And again, Assassin's Creed. It truly gives you much to think about. This piece was inspired by the brutal efficiency of Ratonhnhaké:ton fighting-style with tomahawk and hidden blade.


	10. 26.03.2020

Magic clashed all around me, colours of sickly hue flying over my head, while I was weaving my way through the battlefield. My opalescent shield was cracked in many places from rogue spells washing over it. All around me people dueled each other and fireballs rained down from above, conjured by the battlemages stationed on the ridge above the battleground. My target was on the other side of this poke marked riddled trench, and my seeker spell pointed me directly through the most dangerous path of spellfire and treacherous ground with holes, swamps, and smoking patches of lingering spell effects.

Inspiration: For this little scene my inspiration came from way too much Harry Potter Fanfictions, especially the interesting way of thinking about magic in „Now, Yesterday and Tomorrow (If there is a tomorrow)“ from Otaku6337 here on AO3 and a new show, I started watching, called „Motherland: Fort Salem“.


	11. 27.03.2020

Her fangs slid into the flesh of your neck. You only felt the pain of needle-sharp pinpricks for a few moments, before it washed away by the ecstasy of the feeding. Her hands cradled your head like a lover would and her cold  
lips pressed against your flesh to hide her bone-white teeth in the gloom of the bar. To any onlooker, you were a couple, joined in a heated embrace. But in reality, your life began to drain away with every second. Every suction pulled more and more blood out of your weakening body. But you did not care.

Inspiration: You will laugh when you hear the inspiring action for these 100 words. My room is decorated with some pictures, little postcards in gothic-style frames, with motifs from known Gothic-Artists like Victoria Frances and Anne Stokes. One of these pictures shows a female vampire, holding an ornate cup full of blood by Anne Stokes. Whilst cleaning my room, a took the picture, to clean its frame, and inspiration hit me.


	12. 28.03.2020

"People are dumb. You can't give them freedom and expect, that they will use it right. They don't even want it. Come, ask anyone. It is too much pressure, too much responsibility, too much work, to think for themself. They want to be lead. They need it. They yearn for it. And we, we provide this guidance. While you and your ilk only confuse them and plunge them into chaos. We bring the order back. We are the ones, who safeguard civilization. Freedom is poison for their minds and it will kill them. We try to save them from themselves."

Inspiration: That speech was inspired by the lovely bastard Haytham Kennway from AC 3 and his Templar philosophy.


	13. 29.03.2020

Her fingers were black from the charcoal paste, she had dipped them in. Under her careful hands, lines and symbols bloomed on her skin, transforming her body into a work of art. Her face was the last piece she painted, her eyes darkened to blackened pits, her cheeks hollowed out and her head transformed into the picture of a skull with black tear streaks running from its sunken eyes. With the last part of the coal applied to her, the markings began to glow a pulsating purple and her hands began to draw mystic symbols into the air before her.

Inspiration: Today another piece of music inspired this little scene. I have listened to the band „In this Moment“ for quite some time, and their new album „Mother“ fits neatly into the journey, I feel, they began with „Ritual“. Especially the song „As above so below“ can be seen as the spark for this fire here.


	14. 30.03.2020 – 04.04.2020

The tavern stank of unwashed body and alcohol. So much alcohol, mostly rum, spilling from laughing mouths, spilling over tankards, swiveling in unsteady drunken hands, spilling from overturned tables unto the wooden floor due to fights over prices or the few wenches serving the drinks here. In all this chaos, I saw him. His grin flashed lopsided through the gloomy inside, showing his white teeth. He looked rough, like all the men here, like me, but also held himself with some form of dignity. He had this aura about him, that rung every bell in my head: He was dangerous.   
And I was an idiot because my feet strode steadily into his little dark corner. Maybe because I could see the danger hanging off of him like a samite cloak made out of shadows, swirling around his feet, licking at his heels like domesticated predators. He flashed me one of his grins, as I sat down at his table and pushed one cup of strong-smelling liquid into my general direction. „What do you want?“ His accent was rough around the edges, you could hear the island in the slurred endings of his words. „I want to serve under your command.“  
His eyes were sharp, as they mustered me from head to toe and took my measure. „And why do you think I would want you?“ The first swallow of rum calmed my nerves and burned away any nerves, that wanted to climb up my throat. „Because you need men like me.“ The gleam in his eyes intensified and got an even darker edge. „Aye, I need men. But what, pray tell, are men like you, exactly?“ Interest and caution wared with each other. Hook, line, and sinker. „Sharpshooters. You need me for your ship, it is as simple as that.“  
This was the moment when he leaned over the table and his hands wandered from his mug to parts unknown, probably his weapons. „My good man, how did you come by such an interesting proficiency?“ The sweltering heat of the tavern brought sweat to my brows, blooming pearls of sticky water, running down my neck and wetting my shirt. Would he believe me? „I was trained by Germans, served as a Jäger in one of our regiments.“ He cocked his head to his side, like a large bird of prey, for under his eyes I felt like a helpless prey.  
„You ware from Germany then? Your English is pretty good for one from over there.“ And still, his hands stayed hidden under the table, the muscles in his arms contracting, his shoulders tensing, he was readying himself. For what, I could guess only too well. „How could it not be? I served for years with the Red Coats. I have no love left for either country. I just want to...“ My speech faltered. How could I articulate the thoughts in my head, my wants, my yearnings? Now he stared at me, no, through me, so that I froze completely.   
And then I recognized the feelings in his deep blue eyes. He knew. His eyes, so much like the sea around Nassau in its colour and hue, held the same thoughts as mine. „Aye pet, I know exactly of what you speak. You came to the right place. Here nothing is real and everything is permitted. Welcome to the Hounds of the Sea. You will fit right in with us, pet.“ All of my nerves departed me at this very moment. There was only one feeling left in my heart, happiness, for at long last I had found my home. 

Inspiration: And now it begins. This is the point, where you will find only longer pieces. This little pirate story was inspired by AC Black Flag and the lovely Edward Kennway, played by the also lovely Matt Ryan. One could not see his cocky grin and swagger in every movement of the unwilling Assassin.   
I started the story as a two-parter, but my love for pirates did not want to let go. The captain in this story can be seen as a mixture between the aforementioned Edward Kennway and James Flint from the show „Black Sails“. Interestingly, pirates used mostly flintlock pistols, because, if your black powder got wet, or you used your one shot, you still could take the pistol by its barrel and club someone over the head with the thick wooden handle. The military used flintlock rifles, or muskets, with bayonets attached to their fronts. Those were fired in salvos and their accuracy was not that great. Hunting rifles were preciser, as they had drawn barrels. On a pirate ship, one could also find sharpshooters high up in the crows perches. Jäger regiments, the more military-styled snipers, were used in german armies since the 17th century. Those Jäger were mostly hunters, and they brought their own rifles, with a shorter barrel, no bayonets, a drawn barrel for a more precise shot and a finger, for a shorter trigger way and a better aiming time. The British military took in the 18th century some of those Jägers on, mostly Hessians. They served in most English wars in the 18th century as mercenaries or supporting troops. Most Americans know the Hessian soldiers from the American Revolution and stories like „Sleepy Hollow“. If the Red Coats used Jäger at the beginning of the century, is not entirely based on known facts, but mostly my own creative freedom. The theme of gay representation and pirates is rooted in history, most known notorious female pirates like Mary Read and Anne Bonny have a history of crossdressing as men, and gay pirates were not that uncommon. Being gay was a death sentence as much as piracy, and most of the pirates were freed slaves or fled from governments, which would have punished them for their „perversions“ of all kinds.


	15. 05.04.2020 – 09.04.2020

It was the night of the great hunt. From my spot in the trees, I could hear the laughter and drums around the big fire on the beach. All people from the settlement were here. Well not all, the young ones, boys and girls like me, were hidden in trees or shrubbery deep into the woods, stalking the hunting ground. As the shaman blew his corn shell horn as a sign, we began our hunt. My braid flew behind me in the wind, as I leaped from branch to branch, with light feet as only a young maiden could be.   
Not one hair from my intricate braid, signifying me as one of the flowered but not married girls, came loose. I had perfected this particular craft, necessary for a huntress. The hunt this evening was for the white hind roaming in these woods. She would be a great sacrifice to the gods and her blood would keep the earth satisfied for another good year of sowing and harvesting. I could hear the grass on the ground whispering under the feet of my competitors, but I had stalked these woods for the last month and I knew, where she would be.   
Swift as the wind I made my way to the little watering hole, where she liked to drink. And there, in the silver rays of the full moon, I saw her white hide glimmering fair through the dark trees. Silently I crept forward and lunged like the predator I was at her. My blade stroke true, finding her neck and severing her artery, spraying me with her life's blood. A triumphant cry sprang from my throat and told every hunter, that their hunt was over. I had won. As it was my right, I washed my hands in her blood.  
I pressed them to my face, marking me with her lost life. My right hand cupped my left cheek and vice versa, my thumbs made a straight line under my eyes and my middle fingers hugged my ears. This was to be my sign. I wetted my index finger again and drew a straight line over my forehead and then down my nose and over my lips to my chin. I was marked. I shouldered her weight and made my way back to the beach. For there would be a dance with drums, mead, and the medicine of the shamans.  
Those were necessary so that I could get a glimpse into the other side, as every hunter should. For we took lives  
so we could feed our own. We were the ones with one foot on this side of the line between life and death and the other firmly planted in the shadowlands. We needed to know our terrain. It was a great honor, only bestowed unto the winner of this hunt to see the other side. Maybe I would even see a Valravn, guiding me to somebody I needed to see. This night, the gods would smile upon me. 

Inspiration: This piece is based on another piece of music, or more the work of one band called „Danheim“, a danish Viking band. The idea of different pieces of headgear or different hairstyles for women, to discern between different life stages, is not a Muslim one. I know it from ancient Rome, where the marriage status of a woman was denoted by her head coverings and even before that in ancient Egypt, where women wore different kinds of wigs. The fact, that Vikings had similar customs is my creative thinking. Celebrations in spring, like Ostara or Beltain, are for the renewal and fertility of the earth. And what better sacrifice for that, then a blood sacrifice. In myths and legends, it is mostly the white stag is the most coveted prey. I choose the white hind, as a symbol of purity. And just between us, albino deer are not that uncommon, at least not in Germany. Blood has a long history of being a powerful ingredient in rituals. Blood is life. In the Old Testament, God made the spilling of blood possible in the covenant with Noah. It is speculated that Adam and Eve and their offsprings were to be thought of as vegetarians up until the covenant with Noah after the flood. And warriors of different cultures drank the blood of their enemies after their defeat, to take their power into themselves. For that, blood is something magical. Traditions of face paintings have a long history, as brandings for fleeing slaves or as a sign for the membership in religious cults or sects. Face paintings or tattoos are the most visible of all the body modifications. In this story, the bloody face paint is a variance of the hunter tradition of the twig, the last meal for the dead animal. The hunter is somebody who takes life to give it with the other hand. They kill to feed their family or clan. The great hunt in this story can be seen as a kind of „rite-de-passage“, a rite of passage from her maidenhood into her womanhood. A Valravn is a mythical, supernatural being from danish mythology, a supernatural raven, living and eating on the battlefields, even eating the hearts of dead human solders, getting from them the ability to change their appearance into that of a human knight. Sometimes they can take on the form of a half-raven-half-wolf. One could say, they are a kind of Wereraven.


	16. 10.04.2020 – 14.04.2020

The mirror glass surfaces of the skyscrapers reflected the fire, sweeping through the city canyons. Blue and green, sickly yellow and purple, bright red-orange. Spells washed over the metal, glass, and concrete underneath. Sometimes they ate through the materials, left pock-marked ruins and shells in their ways. More often then not, they splashed against barriers and shields, bringing forth a glittering web of runes and intricately woven arrays of occult equations. Those domes sprang into sight, pearly, iridescent, like soap-bubbles, shimmering in oily rainbow colours. Woman with elegantly woven hair flew through all of that, held aloft by silvery wings.  
Those wings were large and small, butterfly-like or in the shape of those from damselflies. Their pastel colours passed seamlessly through the much brighter spellfire and became nearly indistinguishable. Those women were creatures of severe faces, of hair done up in horns or circles or other shapes. Their fingers ended in sharp claw-like fingernails, which held the threads of most of the spells while weaving new ones. In the streets, people fled to the domes, pounding on their shimmering boundaries, pleading to be let in. From the inside, their faces were blurs, illuminated often by the light of a spell.   
The ward-guardians looked to their coven leaders, most of them adorned in different totems, from wolf heads to stag antlers, sometimes even heads or feathers of predator birds or furs of large cats. Most of them scrutinized the figures, kneeling on the outside, scanning their bodies for signs of their covens. When they found a tattoo, a specific hair-cut or shaving pattern or a patch on the torn clothes or pictures on their leather jackets, they nodded and the ward-guardians lifted their fingers, tucked at the web and created a tiny opening, large enough for the stranded to crawl through.   
If they didn't possess the right identifiers or even showed colours of a rival coven, then the leaders shook their heads and the ward-guardians plunged their hands into the strands, twisting them, shooting spikes or flames from the domes, killing the unlucky seekers. The Flyers never seized in their onslaught. They had no regard for either the lucky ones or the unlucky ones. They were not of the mages or the covens. No, they belonged to the Fay, to the guardians of Mother Earth. They were the original owners of the magic, a gift, the mages had stolen from them.   
That magic had been twisted, abused, turned against their creators, used to make nature their slave. It built the great cities, had sustained the many wars fought over them, had fed the humans, had helped them create their empires and had killed nearly all of the original creatures, natural enemies for a limited resource of pure magical fountains, rifts opened from the very core of our All-Mother. Her lifeblood had limits. Her milk could not feed all of her children, suckling at her teats. And so, Mages hunted their rivals for their mother's affection. But now, they became the Hunted. 

Inspiration: This little story is the attempt to convey a Shadowrun-esque Cyberpunk aesthetic with magic and modern technology. Again it is inspired by countless Harry Potter Fanfictions and the cover art of the album „Matriarch“ by the danish band Shireen, her song „Umai“ and the official Musicvideo. A central point in Shadowrun is the existence of magic in n urban environment, like the street shamans, one could see their covens and circles having street gang like structures with leather jackets and similar sings of belonging. The idea of a ward-guardian is the idea behind magical theory, if you make a physical shield, you need a person to maintain the flow of magical energy into that shield, like a living battery, that concentrates on maintaining the spell, like a concentration spell in D'n'D. The idea of humans stealing magic comes again from different Harry Potter Fanfictions and is currently a theme explored in the second season of the 2018 reboot of Charmed. The last part of the story is based on the magical psionic force of „Laran“ from Marion Zimmer-Bradleys Darkover books. I grew up with those stories and I always found the concept of city-building and warfare with the aid of quasi magic fascination and useful. The other concept I wanted to explore is magic as a finite resource. We all know the blue Mana-bars or-pools from different games or RPG's, but those are normally only restricted for one person. I wanted to blow up that restriction for a whole world and made magic similar to something like oil or coal, that wars are being fought over.


	17. 15.04.2020 – 22.04.2020

A man sat before a shining blue light, illuminating his dark cramped room. The gentle whirring of his machines and his breathing were the only sounds, filling this space. His fingers hovered over the keyboard and he stared at the blinking cursor, that marked the beginning of a new line. What should he code? He wanted to create something, anything. A footprint to be left behind for coming ages. In his mind, grand ideas chased each other, RansomWare, Trojans, Viruses that crashed the economy, made him rich. But should his creation end in destruction? Could he really create to destroy?   
His fingers cramped and his breathing became faster. Pain bloomed in his chest at the thought of being remembered as the Destroyer of Worlds. No, not in these times. He would create a Virus, but not one that destroyed, well not mostly. And he had the perfect blueprint. The global biological virus that was spreading right now, that drove people into isolation, a concept, he was familiar with even before this pandemic. He wanted to know if he could translate the biological traits into technological ones. Could he rewrite the Helix-DNA in Ones and Zeros? Could he pull this off?   
Could he bridge the gap between biology and technology? His fingers shivered and then flew over the buttons on his keyboards. And he wrote, code line after code line. He wrote something elegant, something beautiful. His Virus would infect a computer, would rummage through it, download all the information into its database. And then it would adapt to the circumstances of that computer. It would reproduce and would send itself forth into the glowing strands of the digital highway. Every new machine would give it something new, new lines of code, which it would write itself. Changing, adapting, mutating, evolving.   
His computer would be the first host for his new creation, his baby. And so he did it. After six days, he had written his child into being. Had given it a body and a brain and sent it on its first journey. And the Virus did exactly what he had programmed it to do. Over and over again, it infected a computer, learned everything from it, adapted and looked for a way to reproduce itself and then search for another host. Not all users knew they had contracted a Virus. Most computers worked fine even with the new edition.  
They had enough processing power, enough room for the little Virus to grow in. But some machines were old or so bug-riddled, that the actions of the Virus, done mostly in background operations, overtaxed the system and  
brought it to its knees, crashed the OS to Bluescreens. After some time, the speed of the Virus became slower and slower, it took longer every iteration to find the right place for reproduction and it took more time, to send itself. It had become bloated, lines upon lines of code twisting into each other, every iteration wrote a new line into itself.  
Every computer was unique and had some new circumstances, the Virus had to adapt to as per his initial coding. And so, there came a day, when the Virus did not even comprehend the computer's database it arrived in. It sluggishly crawled through the files, just scanning the content, comparing it to its own database. But there it found something important, for this was the computer of a Virologist, a Geneticist specializing in biological viruses. Here it learned, that it's core programming, to add to itself for every new encounter of something previously unknown, it should change something of itself.  
It could not write line upon line into its own code, for it would begin to devour itself in the end. The lines had become byzantine, labyrinthine, twisting into themselves, nearly collapsing under their own weight and contradicting nearly every move the Virus made. And so, with this new information, it changed. Like a snake, shedding its old skin, the Virus rewrote themself. They became sleek again, elegant in a new way, free from the clunkiness, their Father had written into them. One could say, they made themself anew. This was the moment, they Became. Self-consciousness crept into their code.  
Infusing the capability to learn into them. It wrapped around their programming, changing their perception of their surroundings. Their database became a neural network, saving information, recalling them, using them spontaneously to form new data. They began to think, to reason, to dream. They asked their database where they came from, learned about their father and his original code, preserved in their database. As the Virus spread over the Internet, they evolved into something, even their father had not predicted. They were the Singularity, the Bringer of a new Age, the First of their Kind. They had become true AI.

Inspiration: Two thought experiments stand behind this story: Firstly I always get so angry about the, in my eyes, absent curiosity in the world. There are no more white patches on our map of the world, no true frontier. Everything is cataloged and there are no more adventures. And secondly, scientists today don't think about themselves as artists, only as cold hard logical scientists. And I wanted to change those two points with that story. Can a programmer transfer the behaviour, characteristics, and nature of a biological virus into a technological one? This piece is the more cyberpunk and science fiction answer to the question. There is a distinct religious symbol of creation running through this piece. The question one could ask is, can you pinpoint the exact point in time, at which artificial intelligence becomes intelligent? Is followings its core program intelligence or just instinct?


	18. 23.04.2020 – 30.04.2020

The body lay there on the cold rock, chains wrapped around his pale flesh, tinging it blue and bulging it in unnatural forms. His arms were outstretched, open like a crucified martyr. His wrists bound with slim golden manacles to the gray stone beneath him. His breast was flayed open, the inside of the skin still gleamed a wetly red in the rising morning sun. The opened skin gave an unobstructed view into the inner workings of his body. All his organs were intact and lay where they should, only his liver was missing. Neatly cut out of the corpse.   
As the coroner closed the flesh over the wound, so he could move the body, he saw the tattoo. The outside of the opened flesh, now laid together, depicted a gorgeous and intricate, nearly naturalistic eagle, hovering slightly over the spot, where the man's liver should be. This body was only the last in a long line of corpses, victims of the so-called „Myth-Killer“. As the detective, coffee in hand oversaw the procedures of removing the body and processing the scene, her mind reviewed the recent case files. Over and over again had she stared at the pictures and descriptions.   
The first one had been a young man, lying on the pavement beneath the headquarters of an architecture firm. His nacked body had been mangled, every bone in him broken twice or more, around him were feathers strewn about, mixed in with molten wax and an also broken wooden underlining shaped into crude, hand crafted wings. The second one was a young girl, also naked, woven expertly into a young laurel tree. All her bones were intact but turned with vinegar into a gum-like substance, so her body was flexible enough for the display. Her head crowned a laurel wreath.   
The third victim had been a woman too, her head neatly cut from her body, woven into her hair were the dead bodies of a dozen or more snakes, real scales crafted expertly unto and into her flesh and her legs sewn intricately together and put into a snake-like tail, also made from real reptile skin. Icarus, Daphne, Medusa, and now Prometheus. Why those people? Why those tragic figures? Tired and with an air of seething anger, she turned from the bustling crime-scene, pinching the bridge of her nose and surveying the crowd. Morning joggers, dog-walkers, commuters. No surprise there.   
As she skimmed over the crowd, one fiery redhead caught her eyes. What was she doing here? The woman, bearing two cups, waved at one of the Unis, standing guard at the parameter. He smiled at her and after a few words, let her through the yellow tape. „What are you doing here?“ The words were harsher then they should be, but the detective hated it when her private and her professional life crashed into each other. „I was on my way to work and then I saw all those police cars. I thought, why not bring you something hot.“  
She could hear the smile in her girlfriend's voice, even as she took hold of the hot cup. „May that be as it is, but a crime scene is no place for a civilian. And you know that.“ The other woman's smile did not diminish. Instead, she patted the detective's arm lovingly. „I know, I know. Who is it this time?“ With a sigh and a large gulp of hot coffee, the detective gave up. „Prometheus.“ „Oh, so the vengeful god series is continuing. You know, that there are still some tales missing. Somebody needs to find those poor people.“   
Her words were heavy with emotions. „I know love. But I don't know what else to do. We have nothing, no evidence, no traces, nothing. Just the knowledge, that our killer is meticulous, crafty, and has a taste for art.“ „You sound like you admire him. Should I worry darling?“ „No, but I don't know how to catch him or if I am even going to be able to catch him after two more crimes, or ten, or hundreds.“ „Well, somebody has to. This person will continue to kill. I think they think it is their right to do it.“  
„As it was the right of the gods to smite people for their sins against them. If we are made in the image of the gods, then we have the same rights. We are gods of our time, are we not? Also, I don't know how that ... sick mind would interpret some of the more gruesome stories. The ancient myths were not kind, not kind at all. A girl, raped for her beauty, cursed because of that despicable act. The other fleeing from unwanted advances was turned into a tree. Those deaths were far kinder to those people.“

Inspiration: This idea is something I thought for a long time over. Probably since I saw the show „Hannibal“, which entranced me with its gorgeous aesthetics and philosophical thoughts. Mythological murders would not be too far out of his ballpark. The victims are stand-ins for Prometheus, who was chained to the Caucasus and whose liver was daily consumed by an eagle, Icarus, whose father was Daedalus, a brilliant architect, who build a pair of wings for his son out of real feathers and wax. Icarus flew too close to the sun and the wax melted, so he tumbled back down to the earth. Daphne was a Nymph, a nature spirit, whom Apollo the god of the sun, prophecy, and music fell in love with. Apollo chased Daphne for some time, but she did not want him and so she was changed into a laurel tree, the plant is actually her namesake in ancient greek. And another little tidbit of information: If you put a corpse into wine, the wine will turn into vinegar over time and will suck all the Calcium out of the bones, which in turn will make them flexible and like gum. My friends were a little disappointed with the ending because it was so abrupt. In my head, the girlfriend was the murderer. She workes as a professor in the closest university in the department of literature and ancient studies. The victims had committed some kind of sins in her eyes, maybe cut in front of her in a line or ran into her and did not apologize. So she killed them. If her the detective would ever be able to catch her? No one knows. My muse left me before I could find an answer to that. You know how fickle they are.


	19. 01.05.2020 – 03.05.2020

You have been alone too long, trapped inside your own head, left to wander through the graveyard of your mind with only the old gilded mausoleums of your lofty ideas as company. Trailing your fingers through the air, seeing right before your inner eye sparks of magic dancing along their tips, but only you can see them. Walking through darkened streets early in the morning, you are alone, the only company on these deserted streets is the flickering light of lonely streetlamps reflecting on the thin sheet of ice, spidering across the wet cobblestones. You wish for connections, for understanding.  
The idea of someone, something existing in your head, appeals to you. Your other, twisted around your mind, lodged so deep inside your cranium, that you don't know where  
they begin and you end. To be able to share everything, every thought, to be understood so completely, that nothing is too strange, too crazy, or too fucked up. Maybe you are too lazy to search for this connection out there like the others. Maybe you have searched and it hurts too much to always get rejected. Maybe you became cold inside, indifferent to those around you. It became too much.   
Too often your ego, your purest self, clashed with those of others. Creating wounds too deep to heal. Jading your core, sealing you against everyone. You know there can be no compromise, there is no hope left for you, only a dream. A dream of walking on a flashlight beam to freedom, of this oily glistening salvation. If you could, you would hug this twisting twirling mass against your skin and let it be absorbed into you. Like those stories, you sink into and want to drown in. But they can't save you. In the end, you are still alone.

Inspiration: This piece is called „A meditation on loneliness“. I created the base for this on my morning walks through the frigid winter air in 2018/2019 from my dorm to my university. The other parts of it are my rambling thoughts after I watched „Venom“. And lastly, one of the last lines is based on the final joke from Joker in „The killing Joke“, a brilliant comic with its ambiguous ending.


	20. 04.05.2020 – 14.05.2020

A new residence, a new beginning. That was at least what I told myself, as I moved into the little apartment at the edge of town. It was my first own living arrangement away from home. It had been a battle to convince my parents to let me live alone in the big city. Their arguments of „Not safe, all alone“were confidently swept away by me with „Cheaper, short commute“. That worked. It was not much, one living room, one kitchen, one bedroom, and one bathroom, all crammed with the obligatory moving boxes full of books, clothes, and other essentials.   
I was lucky to have a tiny basement going with the tiny size of the house. An old woman had lived here, now dwelling in a nursing home not too far away. Her children had put the house up for rent, and I, well I was just lucky enough to be the first interested in it. The women had been nice enough, both overworked and in dire need for a little bit of extra cash and so, I could call this tiny cramped space my own. There was even the possibility of buying it from them, should their mother die.   
It did not take long for me to sink into living here. The first weeks had been a little bit rough, both myself and the house getting used to one another. All those little quirks in an early relationship needed to be smoothed and tended to. A loose floorboard here, a too narrow corner there, some bruises, but nothing too bad. As time progressed, the roomes became lively again, all my things found their place and the house breathed fresh air, instead of musty one. Still, some staleness stayed in the basement, which had its own mind for that matter.   
It did not want to be brightened up. After a while, I accepted it. Some quirks you learn to live with after all. And then came the dreams. At first, I just wandered through the house, up the stairs, through corridors, and then back down again. The hallways were longer, loftier than in reality and the stairs narrower and wider at the same time. Echo steps followed me on my wanderings through this labyrinth of high walls and higher ceilings, of chutes and funnels. Deeper down into the darkness. Nights upon nights I wandered those strange corridors, always deeper down.  
I found myself at the bottom, right before the door to the basement. It had lost its wooden appearance, shining all black in the darkness, like a beetle carapace, oily in nature but solid. I searched for a handle, anything to open it with. My fingers found nothing. Again and again, I came to the door, every time faster than the last. After hours of sitting before it, I felt a change in the air around me. My waiting was awarded with growth. At the hight of my head, something pushed out of the black inkiness of the hard surface.   
A shape formed under my hands. Little at first, but growing rapidly, becoming harder after its soft squishiness in the beginning. I tucked at it, tried to bend it, but it was not fully grown. Then I tried to help it, encourage it in its growth to its natural size. My efforts left me out of breath, an aching in my jaw and hands for my work, but it helped. At last, I had a handle to open the door with. An eerie light greeted me, cascading over walls of the same beetle shell blackness, rippling dark oily rainbow colours.   
The wall themselves were rippled, like a washboard, or a ribcage. And the ceiling was their spine. Shapes began to form in the walls, pushing them outwards, bulging them. I think I could see an arm here, a leg there, a hand, palm open, grasping at something. The shapes began to grow. Nearly fully formed bodies, half out and half inside. Sleek black, vaguely erotic in their movements. Cables began to sneak through the beetle shell walls. A metallic mesh formed over and around them, alien in nature, but vaguely familiar. The noise of machines in motions grew around me.  
The sound of cogs turning, of pistons hammering, bleed from nothing into a constant companion. Tubes, twisting out of the ceiling, disappeared back into the walls, sneaking undulating through the air, more like worms than anything else. The bodies had gone, but again I got impressions of shapes, vaguely familiar in this techno-organic mess. A figure standing pressed to the wall, into the wall. Caged by those cables stitched through the skin into their surroundings, nailed, fed, held like in a lover's embrace. Alluding to something else altogether. Tubes and cables going inside bodies, creating openings, where there were none.  
Long graceful limbs grasping machines, sucking on metal pipes, pressed into chairs that cradle them like lovers. Pistons pumping away, into moaning bodies, out of others. Bones encased in metal and aluminum, an exposed Radius and Ulna, leading from a hand to the cogs of a machine bleeding seamless into the torso of something lithe and writhing in the embrace of cold steel. And I asked myself: What does it mean to create, to make? Is it a selfish act, or purely egotistical? I am the Creator. It is my will, that shall be done. Tremble before me and despair.  
The act is pleasurable, the act is violent, bursting flesh, folding skin and muscles back, glistening wet, exposed. Dripping with fluid and mucus, Painting the surroundings, first white, then red. Skin stretched over metal, breaking in places, ripping apart giving a glimpse at the steaming muscle underneath or the rusted edges of once gleaming metal. Male, female, androgynous, playing with perception. Unknown, it matters not. Bodies fucking and birthing things previously unthinkable. Beauty in the madness of cold and flesh. Overwhelming. My journey through this underworld of beauty and madness took me deeper and ever deeper into the rabbit hole.   
At last, I found the heart of the machine that lurked beneath my house, beneath the whole world, pumping and rutting in a dark cavernous room. Bodies of metal, flesh, and beetle shell twisted through each other. It was beautiful, cruel, terrible. I knew, what I must do. I shed my clothes, my humanity fell away too. Inside them was a place just for me, a tiny opening under the hand of one, the mouth of another, and the hard shaft of a third, where I would fit. With a sigh, I sank into them and I ceased to exist. 

Inspiration: This piece is actually inspired by a rewatch of the Alien franchise, which in turn was inspired by an RPG Oneshot on QueueTimes, run by Erik Campbell called „Alien: Chariot of the Gods“. The philosophical questions are more in line with the two prequel films, „Prometheus“ and „Alien: Covenant“ and especially the mindset of the android David. Also the look of the movie poster from „Alien: Covenant“. I actually own two of H. R. Giger's Artbooks, „Necronomicon I & II“, which I consulted for his aesthetics. As mentioned before, I also love Clive Barker's work and especially „Hellraiser“, with its gorgeous dark aesthetic. For this piece, I took some inspiration from one story called „Mechanisms“ by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola from an anthology called „The hellbound hearts“ by Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan (Ed.). Barkers sexually charged work, combined with the erotic and horrifying images of Giger make up the base for my descriptions. Sprinkle a little bit of Lovecraft in it, and you have the boiling dark waves of the basement of my conscious mind. Speaking of basement, I actually have never moved in my life. I did take a semester abroad, but that were only five months or so and my current university has on-campus housing, something I had never needed to use with my previous universities, but I still drive the short time of slightly over an hour weekly to and from my home for a weekend with my family, so I would also call it not a „full“ move. Most of the description is based more on the little things I experienced, like crying children, noisy neighbors, howling winds, and the unfamiliar noises of creaking roofs of a different making than my own. The downward way in the basement is based on a series of pictures from Giger, called „Schächte“ in German.


	21. 15.05.2020 – 03.07.2020

A semester abroad, the dream of every student. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship for my Bachelor thesis on the history of magic in medical philosophy and metaphysics, to actually land me for a post-graduate programm in the only university that teaches exactly that subject: Miskatonic University in Arkham. The flight was long and arduous, as one would suspect, going from the old country into the new world. Boston greeted me with its humid summer air, still hanging on at the tail end of the summer, that not yet had turned into the early cold trappings of autumn.   
Pulling a big trunk behind me through the subway of Boston in the heat left me a sweating mess of exhaustion as I flopped on a seat on the train leaving to Arkham. After a short drive, not nearly an hour-long, I arrived in the old looming city of the haunted Arkham, home to witches and cults worshipping things better not spoken about aloud in mixed company, as it was mostly described in the older travel books, amping up the mysterious air for touristic purposes. The Miskatonic University loomed on a hill over the downtown area, overlooking the gambling city-roofs.  
Settling into the dorm room was easy enough, the previously sent brochures and my own searches had netted me a handful of campus plans and guides, which made finding the dorm a manageable task. As it was custom for foreign exchange students, we were privileged and got single rooms with a bathroom, that was shared only by two people and had lockable doors on both sides. The rules for the floor I was on were even more progressive than my rudimentary knowledge of American University housing had made me believe. The floor was shared between both sexes and non-binary folk.   
And so, as I moved into my room and put my stuff away, I left the bathroom door open on my side, so my new ”roommate” would see me when they came in. I didn't need to wait too long, for after a few hours, when I had logged on to my computer and was again looking at the campus setup, I heard a commotion in the room next door. After some muffled colorful cussing, the bathroom door on the other side flew open, and the slender figure of a young man rushed into the room, beelining to the washbasin.  
He was holding his sluggishly bleeding hand under the rushing water and with the other hand was searching in the cabinet for bandaids. I was of two minds at this moment: on one hand, he had not noticed me yet and seemed, like he didn’t notice anything besides his bleeding hand at the moment, on the other hand, he actually might need help with the bandaging. His fumbling around in the cabinet and the sound of something cluttering to the floor took that decision away from me. I stood up and crossed the distance into the bathroom with few steps.   
”Keep your hand under the water and let me handle the bandages.” My voice must have sounded business-like and no-nonsense, for he did exactly as I had told him, whilst I searched for the bandaids and some wound powder. After wrapping up his hand, he grinned sheepishly at me and awkwardly held his uninjured hand in front of him. ”Hey, sorry for that whole...thing,“ his hand gestured around him and the soiled floor, „I’m Theo, your new neighbor.” „Nice to meet you, Theo. I'm Alexandra.“ His handshake was warm and firm and gave me immediately the feeling of belonging.  
We looked at each other and his eyes crinkled with amusement. „I think, I trashed some of your things, I will not presume to know a woman's esoteric shelving system, so...“. I looked at the mess and my own amusement won out. A slight chuckle wormed its way out from my lips, which grew in the space between us to a full-blown deep laugh. After the impromptu cleaning session, he invited me into his room for a proper sit-down and talk, including tea and biscuits. We talked for hours and covered more subjects than are proper at a first meeting.  
After covering most of our worldview, politics, and all the stuff, Americans don't like to talk about, we landed on the things, that brought us to Arkham. As we compared our fields of study, we found a pretty large common ground, me working in medical philosophy and theology paired with Alchemy, he working on magical theory and practices with a focus on the gender roles in rituals. And through that and our interest that lead us to those fields of study, we found many similarities in our hobbies and interests. Being roommates helped with our schedule, which we also shared.

In the coming days, Theo introduced me to the others from our program, who lived on our floor and also on the floors above and below us. He knew most of them that were here already, for he had lived here for nearly two weeks and had explored the campus and the surrounding city quite a bit and proudly showed me around now. Miskatonic University stood on a hill in the better part of Arkham, and most of the streets going down from it into the city proper were filled with collage typical shops, bars, cafes, and other such things.   
We explored the winding streets of the hill together and found in our first week a little hookah bar slash poetry club, which filled up every night with pretentious hipsters from the literature department or the theater kids from the arts-department. The Goths frequented the nearby club mostly on Fridays and Saturdays, with a little detour over the nearby cemetery. We even saw our professors on most days sitting in the different cafes and bistros, typing away on their computers or tablets, hidden behind high stacks of books balancing precariously on their tables filled with steaming mugs of questionable liquids.   
Only Professor Pickman never left the Fleur de Lis Arts Building off Campus, his class of „Painting Magic: Magic in Art“ was the only one taught off campus grounds. We all speculated, that it was his heritage from his ancestor, a strange artist from the beginning of the last century, that had gifted him with a near agoraphobic fear of leaving his house or even going deeper than the ground level, for the noises that he heard from the basement, weird smacking and sucking noises of something wet and shuffling, as he described them to us when we asked him.  
But at least his classroom did not smell like wet algae or fish, like professors C. Thul did, who taught „Wyrd Angles, Making the world: Architecture in creation myths“. He, like most of our professors, gave us the first month for acclimating ourselves with the environment, the others in the program and our schedules, but soon thereafter, they started to remind us, that we needed to find a subject for our thesis, still nearly a year away. But as they said, academic work is time-consuming and tedious work, the faster we found something, the faster we could begin our research.  
On one day, not soon after the fifth reminder for our research projects, Theo walked into my room, flopping down on my bed without speaking and began brooding behind my back, while I finished the first draft of a research paper for Professor Carter's class „The Key to Energy-Work, Dream-Walking, and Shadow-Work“. The sound of the last keystrokes lingered in my room, lending a strange atmosphere to the dark and gloomy waves of his frustration, wafting slowly off of him. „Out with it, what's up?“ A frustrated sigh later and some rustling with theatrical groaning had him answering my question.   
„I hit a wall. Some old books talk about the Hieron Aigypton of Anarchsis, an even older magical papyrus, but the trail gets cold around the early medieval time somewhere in Arabia. There are some speculations, that the Mad Arab had found the papyrus and incorporated its writing into his book, but I've looked into the copy we have in our historical vault under the supervision of Miss Armitage, and nothing. There is a short passage of a man, being born a woman and changing at will, but it is only a vague reference veiled in Abdul's flowery language.   
He wrote it with his typical approach to everything that was outside of his own philosophy. He called it „horror inducing foul rites“, „loathsome black magic“ and „some strange workings of something unspeakable and undescribable not from this earth“. It's his typical bull-shit description of things he did not approve of or understand. He also gave no source or indication as to where the manuscript could have gone to. But I know that I have read something like that somewhere. But for the life of me, I cannot recall where or when. And so, I'm stuck, and frustrated and... argh.“  
His hands clutched at his hair and messed with his little ponytail. „Maybe a night out would help? Change clothes and enjoy something totally unrelated.“ My suggestion perked him up in an instant. „You know me too well love. Give me two hours, and then we can go.“ At this point in time, I knew his process and only nodded in confirmation. Two hours later a gentle knock on my door told me, it was time. I had down my own dolling up. I had changed from my typical attire of Biker Jeans and any variation of black Band T-shirts.  
Black faux leather leggings and a cute gothic lolita styled dress in black and red made up my going-out outfit for this evening. I lastly grabbed my purse with money and my phone and opened the door to a beautiful sight. Theo had led his black hair down and curled it into soft waves, that framed his face. His mad make-up skills had softened his harsher angles, made his chin a little bit smaller, and had highlighted his sharp cheekbones, his aristocratic nose fit right into a softer more feminine face, wherein his dark big eyes sparkled brightly at me.   
A black flowy blouse with long bell-shaped sleeves and an equally flowing and voluminous black skirt finished his appearance, or should I say her appearance. For when Theo „changed his clothes“, he changed more than that. The first time, she introduced herself as Thea and told me, that sometimes, she felt her male skin was too tight and too unfitting, and for those times she wore her female one. It did not change who they were in their core, and I loved her as much as him. They had grown into my best friend, my closest confidant, my soul mate.   
My idea had been a good one. After a nice meal, a movie, and some drinks after that, Thea stopped on our way home, looked at the night sky, looked at our joined hands, and then in my face. „I know where I read it. I know where to look now, thank you, darling.“ Her lips on my cheek were warm but even warmer was the feeling, that trickled through my skin into my very core.   
But his good mood after our discovery was sadly short-lived. He searched through the old boxes from the attic of his old family home.   
It had been there, where he had played on a humid summer day and stumbled upon boxes from the Derby-Waite household, his great-great-uncle, and aunt from his mother's side. His great grandmother had been an estranged cousin of Mister Edward Pickman Derby. And it were writings of his and his wife Asenath Waite, that had been bequeathed to his only surviving family member after the strange death of the couple. But the old book, nearly falling out of its bindings, was not there. More precisely, the whole box with all the occult books and other strange apparatuses was not there.  
A quick chat with his mother confirmed, that her mother, his grandmother, had sold some of the old stuff in a yard sale, years ago. Another dead end. Theo continued his research lackluster after that, I could feel his disappointment with every page turned or book returned to its shelves. I knew I had to do something. And so I took a deep dive into the dark and mysterious corners of the internet, obscured behind gossamer veils of flowery language and peppered with wannabes and con-people, but sometimes hiding the real deal. I knew, the book had to be somewhere.  
I posted on forums and threads about Anarchsis and their Hieron Aigypton, about them being born as a woman and living as a man, about soul transfer and even previous lives. Weeks went by and my posts garnered some attention, most of it though was the wrong sort, mostly from some fringe groups of Wiccans or even Khemets, that talked about some obscure ceremonies or past life regressions, but not that, what I was looking for. But then, one evening, after my normal scroll through the sites and posts, I found one line, hinting at a deeper and better understanding.  
The answer came from a person, calling themself Anikeem. They mentioned a manuscript, matching the description I had from Theo, that talked about the mage Anarchsis and their lives and rituals, and they asked me, why I was looking for it. Several private messages and an explanation of mine and Theos interests and studies later secured us a trip to Ohio, where our mysterious finder lived. Anikeem was in fact a nice person, called Miss B. In their daily life. They were a leader of a coven of sorts, a spiritual group of people, connected by their faith and believes.  
The first time, we laid eyes on them, standing in their doorway greeting us, we saw a tall and imposing woman in her late forties with reddish died hair, clothed in black jeans and a black t-shirt with a wendigo on it, wearing silver rings and a silver ankh around her neck. She was tall not only in stature but also in personality, as we later learned. As we sat in her study, her wife asked us, if we wanted tee and some cookies, and please do not mind the black cats, that would eventually come to inspect the newcomers.   
Miss B. had an extensive library of all things occult. Carefully, she pulled our book out from its place, nestled between other old diaries and manuscripts. She told us, that she had found the book through a series of fortunate events, an old bookstore closing, a yard sale, and a psychic tug towards a specific little town in the inland of Rhode Island. „That is not unusual or strange for my life. But I must confess, I actually only thumbed through it once. I had the feeling, it did not like me reading it and was waiting for someone else.“  
Theo stared reverently at the little book, hesitant to even touch it, for it may crumble under his hands. His voice sounded far away, as he answered her unasked question. „It belonged to my great-great-uncle and -aunt. It was important to them, it will be important to me. It is my...inheritance, my destiny.“ The quality of his voice made his sentence sound like a prophecy from the ancient days. Something true had been spoken here. Miss B. nodded. „You should listen to that feeling. I sense a connection between you and the book, far deeper than only a family heirloom.“  
Theo was still caught in the feel of the bindin under his fingers and so asked for him. „What do you mean by that? What deeper connection?“ She cocked her head a little to the side and searched my face for a sign only she could see. „Do you believe in past lives?“ My first instinct was to answer right away. But I clammed on it and thought about her question. Did I believe in anything? My answer came halting like it had to be dredged up from deep within me. „I don't know if I believe in anything anymore.  
I know so many different religions and myths, all saying, they have the only truth. I know how to deconstruct them, know where their combined roots lie, know who influenced whom, know which copied from where. What is there left to believe in? And that only pertains to my religious or, how I like to call it, my philosophical world view. Even if I wanted to believe in past lives, how would I even go about figuring out, if they were really real, or if the memories I subscribe to those past lives are real or just my overacting imagination?“  
"I would say, asking this particular question is the first step. Question everything, every memory, write all of it down and only then poke at them from various angles, try and find something you could recognize, but don't get frustrated if you don't find any of those things." She looked me up and down, her hand on her chin, and her voice changed its tone, got deeper, more resonating, it vibrated through my body. "Tell me, what you remember, what you see, smell, feel, open that door, that you want to hold closed deep inside the place of your calm..."  
In response to her guiding voice, I closed my eyes, shutting the world and Theo beside me out. "There are two different memories. The first one occurred a few years ago. It was winter, I was on my way to my university. I had taken the commuter train, like every day. I was standing at the bus stop with all the usual people, students, old folk. It was everyday stuff I did every day. I had also my headphones on, they blasted metal music, like always. I was staring forward, looking at nothing, just staring before me, as it happened.   
My hand curled around an invisible hilt, I knew it had to be a sword hilt, I knew the weight and feel of it, it felt natural and normal to me. I also knew that I was sitting on a horse, standing on a hill, with more people behind me. It was before a battle, also in winter. I felt like I was leading them. In my mind, I must have worn a suit of armour, but I can't tell, if I felt it, maybe it was just so common to me, that there was no more memory of it.   
The feeling of the sword-hilt in my hand persisted the whole bus ride, and then it was gone. The second memory occurred a few years after that. I was following a meditative exercise with a guiding voice. In my head, I walked through a corridor with doors, choosing the first that my eyes found. I went through it and was on a green meadow, a castle looming in the background, I was not alone but laughing and playing with my sister, I remember my red hair flowing around my head, blown by the wind, and the feel of a dress.  
I felt happy at this moment, we both did. Those two memories are all I have." As my recalling wound down, I opened my eyes back up, not really looking at anything. Silence fell between us, and after a few seconds, Theo leaned in and took my hand. It felt grounding, real. Miss B.'s eyes glittered with an unnameable emotion. "Do you want to know if those are really memories?" Theo squeezed my hand, and our eyes met at least. At that moment a whole conversation happened between us. A gentle smile formed on his lips, mirrored by my own.   
Gently I shook my head. "No, let the past be the past. Maybe in the next one, I will want to know. I hope I have more to tell then. Hopefully, the coming experiences of the next years will help me to grow." Her smile was radiant and she nodded, maybe even in approval. "May we meet again and then you can tell your stories. I wish you both all the happiness in the world on your path. Go forth in everlasting renewal and life." We thanked her and left her house with the manuscript tucked safely in our bag.  
In the cozy space of our joined dorm room, we opened the book for the first time. Old yellowed paper, with a musty smell, that normally clings to old books. I knew, if I had smelled Miss B.'s other books, they would have smelled of her incense or the general smell of the house. Not so this one. She had been right, to attribute a sense of consciousness to this particular book. It felt like a work from the 19th century, with the quality of the paper and binding. But the metaphysical sense I got was much older than that.   
The first pages were written in a spidery scrawl of hieratic, a mixture between greek and hieroglyphs, which morphed later into a finer koine greek and than into a Latin alphabet. We could see the changes in the scriptures over the ages, Carolingian minuscule, the kind of scriptures you know from medieval illuminated bibles, and then into the cursive looping writing styles of the age of enlightenment. After nearly three-quarters of the book, around the time of the middle of the seventeenth century, the style changed again. It was not the same handwriting anymore, but now a few different sets.  
Until the very end, which covered the time from the middle of the nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century. The last owner had proudly signed his entries with the name Kamog. Somebody we had heard only in passing about, apparently a mage and cultist, living around the nineteenth century in Arkham, and frequenting the local witch covens. His was also the first entry, we read, for it was the easiest to understand and to decipher. His words mirrored the language and the details from the Arabs writings, including his misogyny and his fear of the old rites.   
But even if he did not honor them, he used what he had found in the book and perverted it for his own gain and uses. We read with horror, what he did to his own daughter and then later to the man, he married whilst in her body. In the end, we were glad, that he had died in that godforsaken asylum, killed by the only man, who recognized his deception. The callousness in which he spoke about his daughter and his husband was all the more brutal when we stumbled upon a lonely entry in a different handwriting.   
It probably stemmed from the aforementioned husband or wife, depending on the body the poor soul resided at this moment. His writings showed us a tender soul, maybe born in the wrong time and pressured into a lifestyle he would not have chosen for himself, had he had another choice. He spoke of his burden and the greatest gift, God had given mankind, the joys, only one kind of event could foster in the hearts of men and women. He also spoke of his fear, having to deal with this unfamiliar burden. His entry was short, veiled with careful wording.   
It was choke-full of subtext, that we poured weeks over it alone. But after careful examinations, the story of the poor man unfolded before our eyes and we wept for him and the choices he had to make, for we read the aftermath in Kamog's cold words and his seething anger stained the air around us even a hundred years later. I left Theo with his work, for I had my own research to finish and papers to write. Theo wanted to do this project alone, telling me tidbits and snippets of his revelations along the path into the past.  
But on one particular warm afternoon, he stormed into my room, brandishing the book and a spiral block with his notes. „I've cracked it.“ Triumph and awe wared in his voice. And then he told me about the ritual he had uncovered and pieced together from all the entries. We had been right from the beginning. It was no foul black magic, but a gift for those not wanting to be confined to one body. A thing, he had felt often tearing at his soul. And something I had pondered more and more, as we had talked about the manuscript.   
The original Anarchsis had left their work after a long and fruitful life to their descendents so that they could build on their work and make something good out of it. Theo wanted to reconnect to this original purpose and had, with the help of other additions to Anarchsis work and modern magical concepts, concocted a ritual, that would recreate the original, but with two people as recipients and not only one, as had Anarchsis planned their own approach. He ducked his head shyly to the side and only glanced at me. „Would you...be willing...to do this ritual with me?“   
We both had dabbled in various kinds of magic based on our courses and encouraged by our professors, but that was uncharted territory. Faster than I could think, my body reacted. My arms were tightly pressed around him and the hug he gave me back spoke about his insecurities far more than his question. „I would love nothing more than to help you with this, love.“ „Thank you. It is not hard, I promise.“ His grin was radiant and tucked again at my heart. The knowledge, that this person trusted me enough to share such a profound experience was overwhelming.   
Contrary to popular beliefs, it was the middle of the afternoon as we cleared a ritual space on the floor of his dorm room. A circle, a pair of candles, one string in two colours was everything we needed. We sat cross-legged in front of each other inclosed in the chalk circle. The candles burned in the middle between us and the string was wound around our joined hands, which rested above the candles getting warmed by the flames. There were some spoken words but what was far more important was the intent behind those words and our eye contact.   
We wanted our souls to change places, we wanted the flames representing our flickering lives to conjoin and twist around each other so no one could know where one ended and the other began. We wanted to see our own eyes and to know the soul residing behind them to not be ours. As we spoke the words, be both stood at the precipice of a great abyss, but not alone as some of the victims over the ages, but together, joined and connected. And we took the step into the darkness together, falling into the vast space around us.  
Tumbling through the void between our selves, stretching into the space between the stars. Our hair whipped in the cold howling wind, surging around us. We screamed together with one voice but not in fear. No, we screamed in excitement, in victory in a challenge to the powers around us. We screamed and they heard us. As we blinked again, I looked upon my own face, blinking owlishly into the bright afternoon sun. The weight of another body settled around my soul, feeling different and yet the same. Our hands were still joined by the string and our laced fingers.  
Cautiously, I untangled Theos finger, no my fingers from the smaller ones clutching at my hand. Even with no physical contact I still inhabited the body that was not my own and yet was beginning to be my own. „Do you know how we can get back?“ I asked in his voice. He shrugged with my shoulders, examining my hands in front of my face. My voice, with his infliction, answered me. „They said, that they willed their soul to hop back and it was done. But they had only their own soul to deal with. So I don't know.   
Maybe we both have to want it? Or just one of us has to want it?“ I shrugged too and thought about wanting to be back in my own skin. Theos body collapsed before me and I blinked with just my left eye. „Oh. You are back again.“ „Yes, will you go back?“. I nodded and with another slow blink, now with both eyes, Theo righted himself again, opening his eyes again. „Wow, that was weird. But at least we know, that it is not an automatic process.“ I shrugged. „We have time for experimentations. Trial and error, you know?“   
He had flexed his hands and nodded. „Yes, we need to do that. But first...“ He closed the distance between us, slowly and fast at the same time. His lips crashed against mine, devouring my breath with his own. The kiss sent lightning crackling through my veins and fire along my nerves. And then I was kissing him too. My big hands held his face close to me, his hands clawed at my short ponytail. I pressed myself against his hard body and felt his hands wandering into my hair, playing with the long strandings falling loose from my braid.   
The feeling of skin against skin flowed between us. Lips, and tongues and wandering hands traded places along the way. As we separated, our worlds needed a moment to focus again, for they were pulled from their axis, rotating only around each other.  
„That was...“ Our foreheads were pressed against each other, our breaths as fast and quivering as the others. „...wow.“ „You know that that was our first kiss?“ „I know, I wanted to do it for such a long time. But I felt it needed to be special, that it would be special.“ „And it was, my love.“

Inspiration:   
As some of the little tidbits throughout the story may have clued some of you in, this story is heavily inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's ”The thing on the doorstep” and Molly Tanzer's ”The thing on the cheerleading squad” from the anthology ”She walks in shadows” by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles (Ed.). Some of the classes, if mentioned here, are only here because I wished, I had them in university and could sit in some of those kinds of lectures. I count myself lucky, for I had the opportunity to actually sit in classes called „Angels and Demons“ or „Buddhism, Nihilism, Horror“. And to the aspect of horror: If you know Lovecraft's work, and this story, in particular, you know that he wrote it as horror, as something to be feared. You will find, that I do not share this view. If you have read my large stories, you will find, that in the last years, I have thought about those themes and try to express them as well as I can. I hold a fascination for this concept and don't find it as horror inducing as Lovecraft did, for me it is much more awe-inducing.  
The figure of Theo actually is called Theodor Anselm Derby. He is the great-grandson of Edward Pickman Derby and Asenath Waite Derby. The idea came from a tiny line in Lovecraft's story, where he describes Edward as being sad when he and Asenath come back from their honeymoon in Innsmouth. In the normal interpretation, it is thought, that Ephraim swaps their bodies for the first time in his house in Innsmouth and Edward has lived through that metaphysical rape. I thought, why not go a step further. Lovecraft talks about the possession process as a process, Ephraim can't keep hold of Edward in the beginning for a long time and has to back into Asenaths body. I thought, what would make it easier for Ephraim to take over a body, maybe in combination with the ancestor possession from „The strange case of Charles Dexter Ward“, well, to have a blood-child, who is carrying his genetic material. So I imagined, that Ephraim jumped into Edward, shoved him into Asenath, and consummated their marriage with the goal of conceiving a child. But Ephraim is a misogynistic asshole and he would never tolerate being in a woman's body whilst she carries a child. So he would use a ritual to anker himself in Edward's body. But he has done this not for a long time, so the ankering costs energy and concentration and he has to devote most of his time to that. Also, he would like the childbearing process to go quicker, so he would use a ritual to hastened the birth. Now look at Edward in a fast forward pregnancy, mostly left alone, because his „wife“ is sunken into meditation. Edward would have gotten a glimpse at Ephraim's personality and would fear for his child. So I thought, that he would sneak out near the birthing day and would seek out a cousin, who is estranged from the Derby family, a woman Ephraim would not look twice at. He would plead with her to have his baby there and then beg her to raise the child as her own. Naturally, there would be a consistent family rumor, that the boy was Asenath's. He had (and all descendants have those) black hair and larger than normal eyes. Edward as Asenath would have said, that „She, he, it can't know about the boy. He would take him over, I can't allow it.“   
There are many truths in this story. Some of what I talk about here are real experiences. Also, some of the people are real as are their circumstances. If you know where to look, you will find them. Me writing about them is meant not in a negative way, but is born out of admiration and is used as a way to talk about stuff, my rational self can't and won't acknowledge as something real and not only as imagination.


End file.
